ilduce39

Funny how everyone is all over Yzerman because he signed a few guys. I’m sure it’s more just Twitter GMs than actual wings fans. He still sold on Hronek and Bertuzzi to add 2 extra 1sts in some pretty deep drafts. He’s got a nice young core. Those are the moves I wish we made a few years ago with Tanev, Markstrom, etc if we weren’t going to keep them. The idea that he needs to lean into being the worst team in the league is fantasy land. You can get away with that for a season or two maybe but if you want to build around Larkin, Seider, etc you still need to give them nhl caliber teammates.

No, I meant San Jose just trade a retained Karlsson for Pesce and cut us out of the equation. Then deal Pesce on the open market. He’s probably worth a 1st, 2nd, prospect. For us, maybe they want to gamble we’re not a playoff team so our 1st could be more valuable and they could double dip with Myers. Lacking a 2nd hurts our chances though.

The down side of a responsible offseason is that it’s pretty boring.

Yep for sure - at 50% retention for 4 years that just isn’t enough. But full freight or even modest retention and they aren’t getting anything, either. As someone else pointed out, though, at that point why not just keep Pesce and shop him / flip him at the deadline? We still need to be paying a Pesce-price and I’m not sure a protected 1st and Hoglander does it. It’s close, though and maybe they don’t want an unhappy player on the roster all year.

Treliving taking some heat from the TO fans used to living and dying by their jfresh graphs. Will be interesting to see if his tweaks lead to anything next year.

Some nice buzz around him when he signed and unfortunately he promptly broke his leg. He was a candidate to be a depth nhl RHd who could fight and bring a spark - a role that ultimately was filled by Burroughs in the same time frame. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were brought in to compete with one another and Kyle just ran with the assignment after Brady went down. Surprised / glad to see him get another nice AHL contract though and wish him all the best.

At 50% they might be.. but around 70% retention that’s probably spot on. In the current cap climate they’ll be lucky to get a 1st back for Karlsson even with moderate retention.

Once again this team finds itself on the precipice of being in great shape cap-wise if we’re just a little patient. Myers, Beauvillier, Pearson, Cole and Bleuger all off the books in a year. Expected big cap increase. Yes, we’ll need to hand out a few raises… but there’s opportunity to add one or even two big core pieces. I won’t cry if we do make another move or two - but standing pat on this roster isn’t the worst thing in the world either.

Hirose looked cool as a cucumber but giving him some development time in Abby makes a ton of sense. As it stands I’d assume 3LD is a battle between Irwin and Wolanin unless someone does something crazy.

That’s been an issue for us - star or young players get roughed up and no one responds. We’ve had guys willing to fight - but have lacked that mentality. Big job for the leaders / coaches to work on. Being a more confident / successful hockey team should help.

Call me crazy, but I think I might actually prefer the look of our team with Myers over Dumba.. but to make this case, he probably looks at Schenn - usually an offensive black hole - putting up 22 points in 50 games caddying for Hughes last year. In a vacuum I’d be okay with signing Dumba to a show-me but I’m not sure it’s worth the squeeze to offload Myers and seriously downgrade the muscle on our back end. If it was to replace a winger’s salary I’d be down. Hughes-Dumba Cole-Hronek Soucy-Myers With Cole-Hronek playing shutdown? That could be really nice.

Absolutely! I’m optimistic. And yes.. with those 3 we’ll be getting a lot of practice if nothing else.

I understand the concern, but I didn’t think our problems the past few years stem from a lack of toughness. We’ve always been among league leaders in fights and probably hits. Meanwhile, we’re bringing in guys who are harder to play against hockey-wise. That seems to be the key. We’ll miss Schenn as a true heavyweight but adding Cole and Soucy, while likely keeping Myers means our back end has some decent size. Hronek plays hard. It’s a new league - the odd team capable of bullying us in the playoffs doesn’t seem like a pressing concern while we figure out how to make it there in the first place.

Our 3C spot leaves a lot to be desired BUT Bleuger’s PK acumen also fills a huge void. As it stands, we’ll be banking on Garland and some other wingers to drive O in the bottom 6. Also, hoping Aman or Joshua can step up and provide scoring at C. Overall, it’s a playoff level roster for sure assuming they can figure out the PK.

I was under the impression that, with Pearson healthy, we were out of space. Would love to learn we have space for another signing or two. Suter on a 1 year deal to push Bleuger to 4C would be fantastic.

At this point I’d be surprised if we do much else. Will be a delicate balance as some names fall the board and other teams warm up to our players - do we retain a willingness to make trades? Maybe on Garland. Not so sure about Myers. The D as it stands doesn’t look half bad with Myers on the 3rd pair. He still brings great size, can play up the lineup in a pinch but primarily in a reduced role could minimize his chaos. I’d be interested to see how he does with a no nonsense partner like Wolanin, as well.

I can see that - last year on paper looked pretty good. We don’t have the firepower to roll 3 lines like we could with Petey-Miller-Bo and on paper OEL-Myers were coming off a solid season (but obviously didn’t maintain it). Lazar looked like a nice pick up. This year we absolutely need some wingers to step up to help with depth scoring as Bleuger / Aman are limited offensively. I am a lot more confident in the back end - but we’ll miss Schenn even if I wouldn’t want him back at what he signed for.

As it stands? Mikheyev-Petey-Kuzmenko Beauvillier-Miller-Boeser Joshua-Bleuger-Garland Pearson-Aman-Podkolzin (Hoglander) Hughes-Cole Soucy-Hronek Wolanin-Myers (Irwin-Juulsen) Demko Martin I think it’s a pretty decent lineup - should contend for playoffs. But, I’ve been wrong about that the past 2 seasons so who knows? I’ll take it over: Mikheyev-Petey-Kuzmenko Garland-Miller-Boeser Pearson-Horvat-Podkolzin Joshua-Lazar-Hoglander Hughes-Schenn OEL-Myers Dermott-Poolman I swear it looked better on paper before last year.

Hockey-wise, a 3x1 for Cole is about as good as I could have imagined a veteran FA signing for us. Assuming he maintains his play he’s bringing size, physicality and cup winning experience.

Kind of weird to say, but with Bleuger, Cole, Soucy and a healthy Mikheyev and Demko we could have a top PK next year.

Yeah, playing with Hronek or Hughes should make things simple for him. Probably easier to play with than slOw-EL.

It makes sense if we’re looking to move on from Myers next year / at the deadline. But I’ve heard it’s unlikely right now.

Has the Soucy-Hronek experiment had officially begun in Van? (Coach has options and we’re likely not done…) caveats aside, while it’s not the high end top pair I was hoping for, but it’s a big league top 4 pair from the looks of it. It’s enough to have me hopeful anyways.

I believe they both can play off hand - Cole even more so. He’ll probably be the one lining up with Hughes at this point.

The Cole and Bleuger deals are great. Love the one year commitment. And Soucy 3 years isn’t too bad. The market got him a little extra $ seems like it. D is certainly bigger and badder than it’s been in YEARS.